Visiting Scholar

The John W. Ryan Visiting Scholar Initiative

The John W. Ryan Visiting Scholar Initiative is intimately connected to the basic purpose of The Remnant Trust; namely the trans-generation communication of the values of individual liberty and human dignity through “hands on” use of original sources.

This connection is achieved in several important ways. First, the very idea of visiting scholar re-incarnates the centuries old tradition of physical inter-association of men of letters seeking to advance their understanding of the essential ideas and conditions of liberty, and simultaneously the intellectual exchange of philosophical rationales for promoting freedom on all levels of human experience.

Second, The Visiting Scholar Initiative is a practical approach to bring the attention of the academic world to this rich treasure and give testimony to the importance of encouraging and supporting the academic community in its responsibility to cultivate among the generations knowledge of the historical struggle to establish political, social, and economic conditions of freedom. Further, The Initiative serves to enhance sensitivity by current and future generations to issues of protecting and extending liberty and the need to recognize and confront threats to the continuation of conditions of liberty.

Liberty and Dignity throughout recorded history have been advanced and sustained by scholars and teachers both within and tangential to academic communities. Preservation of the prescient works themselves, and promulgation of the ideas contained therein, requires the participation of the broad academic community, and The Visiting Scholar Initiative is an efficient, effective strategy to achieve such participation.

Third, the visiting scholar, each year, serves as an excellent mentor to the cadre of interns who are attracted to the collection and programs of The Remnant Trust. The visiting scholar, of course, utilizes the resources of The Remnant Trust to pursue study of themes of liberty, look for application in today’s world of the lessons learned over the ages, increase their own sophistication in the realm of identifying threats to freedom and offering ideas to combat them, and employ the latest techniques of communication and pedagogy to increase the power and reach of all teachers of ideas of liberty and dignity.